A Hindu mob had smashed through the heavy wooden door to the man’s home, then beat him to death with his wife’s sewing machine. They took samples of the meat stored in the victim’s family fridge for “forensic tests” to assess whether or not it was beef, which many Hindu extremists believe should be a mitigating factor for the murderers. The forensic tests later revealed that he was eating lamb.
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In the past, Modi has spoken out angrily against India’s beef industry. “Hindus will be judged not by their tilaks, not by the correct chanting of mantras, not by their pilgrimages, not by their most punctilious observances of caste rules, but their ability to protect the cow”. On Sunday night, a mob burned a van allegedly carrying beef in a village about 200 miles away from India’s financial hub of Mumbai.
Are these incidents, and the hysteria around them, really about beef?
While attacks against minorities, and indeed writers and intellectuals have occurred in India before, a few groups within this new wave of resurgent Hindu nationalism may be more brazen and potentially unsafe than anything we have seen before. Death of Iqlakh has triggered a nation-wide outrage as the incident tarnished the country’s secular fabric. Numerous victims were Muslims and Christians. “Muslims must decide if they want to fight Hindus or poverty”, Modi said at a campaign rally in Bihar state, where elections start next week.
India, a country of 1.3 billion, is about 81 percent Hindu and 13 percent Muslim.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today called upon the people to maintain communal harmony and alleviate poverty together, instead of listening to leaders of smaller parties who try to fan issues which creates tension.
“The country has to stand united”. But local BJP leaders commenting on the killing in Dadri say beef-eating is a “provocation” that would naturally prompt a forceful reaction from devout Hindus – akin to the “blame the victim” rhetoric often used for women who have been raped. President Obama’s comments hurt, and it was necessary for a Prime Minister set to woo the world to back off. He did, and with his remarks “love jihad” and “ghar wapsi” programs though simmering at times, also waned. Modi has been criticised for failing to speak out and condemn the murder.
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Shekhar Gupta, one of India’s most respected journalists, considers the beef lynching to be a watershed moment. The President makes carefully considered opinion statements only on certain occasions, notably on the eve of Independence Day on August 15, and on January 26, Republic Day, apart from the opening speech to a joint session of Parliament for the Budget Session. Danish Mohammed has a degree in history, political science and public administration and dreamed of taking the civil service exam and becoming a bureaucrat, his brother said.
